The Mongoose (2026): A Love Letter to Veterans Written in Tire Smoke
A highly decorated combat vet, Ryan ''Fang'' Flanagan, is fleeing a murder scene at 130 miles an hour in a Mustang Shelby Super Snake GT350.
There comes a point in every action star's career when the knees start making noises that sound like somebody stepping on a bag of Doritos, and the insurance company begins asking whether the next fight scene could possibly take place in a comfortable recliner. Liam Neeson has apparently reached that intersection, and rather than surrender his action credentials, he's climbed behind the wheel of a Shelby Mustang and decided to let Detroit do the heavy lifting.
Welcome to The Mongoose, a 2026 action thriller that proves you can still have a reasonably entertaining movie with an aging action hero, a ridiculously powerful automobile, and a screenplay that occasionally appears to have been written on the back of a speeding ticket.
Directed by Mark Vanselow, a longtime stunt veteran who has worked with Neeson for years, the film follows Ryan "Fang" Flanagan, a decorated Special Forces veteran whose life takes an unfortunate turn following a deadly confrontation involving his ex-wife's abusive fiancé.
Suddenly, Fang is tearing across America in a stolen Shelby Mustang, pursued by law enforcement, assisted by former military buddies, and becoming something of a national television celebrity.
Think The Fugitive meets Smokey and the Bandit, with a little First Blood thrown in for the veteran sympathy vote. All that's missing is Burt Reynolds laughing from the passenger seat and a sheriff whose blood pressure could power a small hydroelectric dam.
Now, I've always liked Liam Neeson. The man has a screen presence that could intimidate a grizzly bear into apologizing for blocking his driveway. But we have to acknowledge reality. Liam is getting a little long in the tooth for the whole hand-to-hand combat routine.
There's only so many times you can watch a man approaching 75 dismantle six heavily armed mercenaries before wondering whether the real villain is his orthopedic surgeon.
That's why I actually appreciate this direction for his career. Instead of pretending he's still the unstoppable killing machine from Taken, Neeson gets to play a character whose experience, determination, and emotional baggage matter more than his ability to kick somebody through a drywall partition.
It's a smarter use of his talents, and frankly, I hope we see more of it.
The movie also has something going for it that Hollywood doesn't always handle particularly well: genuine affection for military veterans.
Underneath the roaring engines and flying police cruisers is a story about soldiers who have sacrificed enormously, returned home carrying invisible wounds, and discovered that civilian life doesn't necessarily come with a welcoming committee and a complimentary fruit basket.
Fang's relationship with his former brothers-in-arms gives the movie its emotional backbone. Ving Rhames, playing Tanker, brings that familiar combination of authority and quiet menace. He's the kind of guy who could read the nutritional information on a cereal box and somehow make it sound like a declaration of war.
There's something refreshing about a film that recognizes loyalty, brotherhood, and sacrifice without treating those concepts like embarrassing relics from a less enlightened civilization.
For all its flaws, The Mongoose feels like a love letter to veterans. And that's something I can appreciate.
But let's discuss the real star of this production.
The car.
Good grief, the car.
That Shelby Mustang is an absolute mechanical psychopath, a thunderous monument to American horsepower that looks like it was designed by engineers who considered fuel economy a personal insult.
And the driving sequences are easily the best part of the movie.
You can practically smell the burning rubber as Fang rockets down highways, dodges pursuing vehicles, and puts enough punishment on that Mustang to make an insurance adjuster spontaneously burst into tears.
Vanselow's extensive stunt background really pays off here. The action has energy, the driving looks terrific, and the vehicular chaos is considerably more convincing than the screenplay's occasional attempts at sophistication.
Apparently, there's even some amusing behind-the-scenes trivia suggesting that Neeson, supposedly a Chevy enthusiast, wasn't thrilled about spending the movie driving a Ford.
If that story is accurate, I can only imagine the negotiations.
"Mr. Neeson, we've got you a beautiful Shelby Mustang."
"I have a particular set of preferences."
Somewhere in Detroit, a Chevrolet executive just shed a single patriotic tear.
Then there's Marisa Tomei.
Lovely Marisa Tomei.
She plays Fang's ex-wife, Tara, and remains one of those actresses who can bring warmth and humanity to a scene without appearing to exert much effort. She's charming, believable, and a welcome counterbalance to all the testosterone and automotive destruction.
I just wish the script had given her more room to shine.
Michael Chiklis also joins the festivities as Major Walter Pope, bringing the sort of hard-nosed authority you'd expect from a man who looks like he was born already disappointed in your behaviour.
Unfortunately, the movie isn't nearly as clever as its cast.
For starters, the plot is predictable enough that you can practically see the next story development approaching with its turn signal flashing.
There are moments when the screenplay seems determined to surprise us, only to deliver exactly what you'd expect from an action thriller assembled using the Hollywood Emergency Screenwriting Kit.
It's not necessarily terrible. It's just familiar.
And familiar isn't always bad. I eat the same breakfast several mornings a week, but I don't expect somebody to charge me admission and advertise the toast as an unprecedented cinematic experience.
Then we have CNN.
Oh, CNN.
The film uses television news coverage as a major part of the unfolding spectacle, and watching CNN portrayed as a serious, authoritative news organization gave me one of my biggest laughs of the evening.
I'm sure some viewers will accept that without blinking. Personally, I found the idea of cable news calmly delivering an objective account of a politically charged national spectacle to be the movie's most ambitious work of fiction.
And this is a film featuring an aging Liam Neeson outrunning an army of police officers in a supercharged Mustang.
That's quite an achievement.
I also wasn't particularly impressed with the stereotypical treatment of Texas. Hollywood occasionally seems convinced that everyone south of Oklahoma is either a cowboy, a gun enthusiast, a redneck, or some combination of all three.
Apparently, subtlety got lost somewhere outside Amarillo.
Texas is a fascinating place with a complicated culture, but you'd never know it from the collection of familiar caricatures that filmmakers keep pulling out whenever they need a convenient Southern backdrop.
It's lazy, and the movie would have benefited from treating its setting with a little more imagination.
The ending also left me wanting something more emotionally satisfying.
Without spoiling anything, there was a terrific opportunity to give audiences a meaningful reunion that could have reinforced the movie's themes of loyalty, sacrifice, and human connection.
Instead, I felt like the filmmakers drove right past that exit without even slowing down.
And that's frustrating because the emotional ingredients were already sitting there, waiting to be used.
One interesting footnote is that The Mongoose reportedly found its way onto Amazon Prime Video ahead of its intended release. There's something wonderfully appropriate about a movie concerning a man desperately trying to escape the authorities having its own release apparently escape the control of the people responsible for distributing it.
You couldn't script a better marketing accident.
Ultimately, The Mongoose is one of those movies that delivers a reasonably enjoyable evening without making much of a lasting impression.
The action works. The driving is excellent. Neeson remains watchable, Tomei is delightful, and the respect shown toward military veterans gives the story a welcome degree of heart.
But the predictable plotting, familiar stereotypes, and missed emotional opportunities prevent it from becoming anything particularly memorable.
I don't regret watching it. I just suspect that three days from now, I'll remember the Mustang more clearly than most of the story.
It's certainly not Liam Neeson's finest hour, but it's nowhere near his worst either. There's still plenty of mileage left in the man, provided Hollywood understands that he doesn't need to beat up an entire Albanian crime syndicate every time he collects a paycheque.
Sometimes all he needs is a good cast, a decent story, and a car with enough horsepower to make the environmental lobby require smelling salts.
My Rating: 6.2/10
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